Opportunity Knocked Twice
by No. Just No. NO
Summary: It happened suddenly. One minute there was nothing there, the next there was a solid weight pressing into Dean's back. "Well, that was a pyrrhic victory," a familiar voice remarked. Team Free Will kills Lucifer, and then their problems really start.
1. In Which Everything Does Not Go to Hell

**Wow, here I go! It's been a while since I've posted anything, but since this is already mostly written I think I'm safe. Be careful, there are some descriptions of injuries in the next chapter, and some sort-of character death. And time travel, don't forget the time travel.**

* * *

Dean had gotten there as soon as he could.

After his father had called him and said he'd needed help on a hunt, he'd gunned it all the way to Michigan, and got to the hotel around noon. His father hadn't said what was going on over the phone, just that things were behaving oddly and something was up, but his father would never ask for help on a hunt if it wasn't a big deal.

Room 023. First right, three doors down. That was it.

Dean knocked, waited half a second, then opened the door. It was unlocked and the hotel was evacuated.

John looked up from his journal as soon as Dean entered the room."Good, you're here. There's been a lot of demonic activity around here, spiking about a month ago, and then nothing until now. Something's coming."

Dean blinked, thrown for a moment by the transition—when John had told him to hurry, he'd envisioned something a little more immediate.

John raised an eyebrow at his son's lack of perceptiveness.

"It's arriving tonight, whatever it is. And it's big enough to scare off every demon in a ten-mile radius." He said.

"Ah." Dean replied. That sounded bad. "So, what is it? Demon? Some kind of spirit? Should we be getting out the holy water?"

His father just shook his head. "I'm not sure. There's nothing—anywhere—that references something like this happening. Whatever it is, it's never come around before."

That meant preparing for everything, then. At least there wasn't any research involved. Dean sat on one of the two beds in the sterile, white room. "Do we know when it's coming?"

"Should be about eight tonight, if the pattern holds. We'll have time to stock up on everything we need to, and get some rest besides, if we're lucky. For now, you stand guard here and I'll restock on ammo."

"Sir." Dean nodded his acquiescence and leaned back on the bed, preparing for a long wait. John walked out of the hotel room.

Not five minutes had passed before Dean's phone rang in his pocket. Pulling it out, he checked the caller I.D.

And promptly dropped his phone onto the mattress.

_Sammy_?

His stubborn, prideful little brother was calling him? On his own, without…well, anything?

Dean scrambled to scoop his phone up and fumbled with the talk button. He'd never thought he'd hear from him until Sammy was ready to come back home from college or Dean finally gave up on living without his brother, but if Sammy was calling now, he certainly wouldn't waste the chance.

"Sammy?" He asked, breathless.

"Dean! Are you alright?" Sam's voice came through the phone, tinny and worried but _there_.

"Sam! Did something happen? Why are you calling?" He demanded, sitting up on his bed. Sam's tone was borderline frantic and Dean didn't like it.

"I…no. Nothing. Tell me, are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere? Talk to me, Dean." Sam's voice was no less tense, but now Dean could practically feel the _I shouldn't have called, I'm just gonna go, why did I think this was a good idea_? creeping in.

"I'm fine, Sammy, I haven't been doing anything too dangerous lately. What's going on?"

Sam sighed. "It's nothing, I'm sure. I shouldn't have called. It was just a feeling. Look, I've got to go." And before Dean could say anything, his little brother hung up on him.

Dean frowned, thinking, even as he automatically moved to call Sam back. Sammy's instincts were uncanny—he couldn't remember the last time Sam had had a bad feeling about something that hadn't turned out to be completely deserved. For Sam to be concerned enough to call, despite practically disowning his family a year ago when he finally cut ties with Dean…it didn't bode well.

He cursed as his call was ignored and got up to pace the floor of the hotel room. He didn't like this. Some mysterious demonic activities, Sammy calling after months of silence for a bad feeling…and that wasn't all. Sam had sounded _scared_. Sam just wasn't afraid of many things—not after being trained as a hunter. Something rattling his brother that much was almost unheard of.

Dean called Sam one more time before giving it up as a lost cause. Obviously his brother had recovered his pride enough to remember that he wasn't talking to Dean and wanted nothing to do with supernatural _anything_.

He was still pacing the length of the hotel room, and still no closer to answers, when John came back in bearing weapons and ammunition of all kinds.

"Sammy just called me." Dean blurted out the instant his father crossed the threshold.

His father nearly dropped his load of weaponry before recovering his composure.

"I thought the two of you didn't talk anymore?" He asked.

Dean let out a frustrated huff of air. "That's just it—we _don't_. I didn't think I'd be hearing from him for a couple more years at least, but then he calls me and says he has a _bad feeling_. He kept asking if I was okay. He sounded scared, dad."

John's brow furrowed. He'd always put credence in Sam's instincts, sometimes even more than Dean. He knew immediately what Dean was worried about.

"You think this is related to what's going on here? Do you think Sam knows something we don't?"

But Dean shook his head. "He would have told me if he thought we were walking into danger and he could prevent it. He hasn't been answering my calls, so I'd say he's said all he's going to."

John's brow furrowed and he moved to set his armful of weapons down on the far bed.

"We'll have to be cautious about this, but we can't just ignore it. Something could happen tonight that puts everyone in this town in danger, and we need to be here to stop it. We'll set up salt lines and wait it out." Dean's father declared, checking one of the guns for ammunition.

Dean settled down to help him, and they waited for the night.

* * *

It happened suddenly. One minute there was nothing there, the next there was a solid weight pressing into Dean's back.

"Well, that was a pyrrhic victory," a familiar voice remarked in Dean's ear before he could feel a body slump over him and slide to the ground. He whipped around.

_"Sammy?"_

It hadn't occurred to him that Sam's bad feeling might not be for Dean at all—that something could happen to _Sam_. Sam was supposed to be safe and away at college, not slumped half-curled in a hotel room.

Dean saw blood begin spreading beneath his brother's body and his whole world tilted just a little before he was pushed to the side by a worried father.

"Sam. Look at me, Sam, look up. Sam!" John crouched down next to his youngest, carefully turning him over, and Dean's world went even a little more off-kilter when he registered what a bloody _mess_ his brother was.

Sam had a deep stab wound going straight through his abdomen, and several cuts and scratched of varying depth all over him. One went straight across his lips on the left and Dean noted absently that it was going to scar before his father's voice snapped him out of his daze.

"Dean! First aid kit, _now_. I'm getting these clothes off of him."

Right. Get rid of the clothes, apply bandages, stop Sammy from bleeding out all over the hotel room. Dean scrambled to his feet—when had he stopped standing? And over to the bed where the first aid kit sat, just in case. He shoved it in his father's face just when John got done cutting Sam's shirt off of him. Some of the blood was old, because the shirt stuck and Sam flinched and groaned when they tore it off.

Immediately, Dean was handing his father a needle and thread while he got busy with disinfectant and bandages.

It was a tense half hour or hour or lifetime while they stitched his little brother back to life. Sammy was still too pale and not very responsive, but they got him into a bed and out of the danger zone. Dean and his father sat on the other bed, surrounded by weapons. Dean couldn't help noticing that despite how clearly he'd been in a fight—one with both guns and blades, not to mention claws, if the cuts all over Sam were any indication—Dean's baby brother had no weapons on him whatsoever.

A sitting duck.

Dean had let his brother get away from him and he'd been a sitting duck. Ready for anyone to half-kill him.

"He said it was a pyrrhic victory. Whatever was supposed to come here isn't coming." John's voice broke into his thoughts, sounding just as exhausted as Dean is.

Dean just kept staring at his little brother.

A pyrrhic victory. A victory that wasn't worth the price.

Dean couldn't agree more.

"Why Sammy?" He asked the room in general. "He quit hunting. He wanted a normal life—like a civilian."

His father just shook his head. "That's a question Sam'll have to answer. Maybe he figured out what was going on. Maybe he was just unlucky. We'll know as soon as he wakes up."

Well-intentioned as he might be, John Winchester wasn't made for long periods of inactivity any more than Dean was. Before long, he was moving through the room, keeping some weapons out and putting some in a pile to go back to the Impala. By the time an hour had passed and Sammy hadn't moved, he'd gone out and gotten coffee and food, along with more bandages and disinfectant to replenish the first aid kit.

Dean hadn't moved from his post on the side of the bed, watching his brother in unconsciousness.

Two hours passed and John gave up on trying to get Dean to eat anything, moving to guard the door.

Another hour and Sam woke up with a gasp.

Immediately, he struggled to sit up, coughing blood onto the sheets in the attempt. It was old blood, but Dean wondered if they shouldn't have brought him to the hospital.

"Sam. Sammy, it's me. You're safe. Calm down, there you go, Sammy. It's me." Dean murmured, smoothing his hands through his brother's ridiculous hair.

Sam mumbled something incoherent, eyes focusing on Dean, as he relaxed just a little and sat back against the headboard. He looked dazed for a moment before he shook it off.

"Dean," he murmured, "Dean, I'm sorry."

And damned if that didn't look like the saddest thing he's ever seen. Sam looked down and avoided Dean's eyes.

"What? What are you sorry for?" John asked him, crossing the room in a few short strides.

Sam jerked his head up to look at him, then seemed to reel a bit from the effort as he swayed against the headboard.

Then he broke out into a huge, painful smile. It has to be pulling on the cut across Sam's lips, but he doesn't seem to notice a thing.

"It worked," he murmured, "you're _alive_. _You're alive."_

John kept pressing, sitting on the side of the bed opposite Dean. "_What_ worked, Sam? What happened there? What did you win, and how?"

Sam flinched, just a little, and Dean clamped down on the urge to defend his brother. They needed to know what was going on, and they needed Sam to tell them while he was still too out of it to avoid their questions.

"We won…I don't think we won. No, we didn't win. But he's dead now. He's dead. He's gone. He'll never hurt us again. We won." Now that Sam's words had started, they just didn't stop. "I'm so sorry, I wanted to tell you but you would have stopped me it was too dangerous Dean I'm sorry I think Cas is dead there was an explosion Dean I'm sorry they're dead I didn't want anyone to die I just wanted to not hurt anyone I don't want to be a monster he had to die Dean I-"

Just as suddenly as he'd started, Sam stopped, blinking at Dean with an eerie clarity.

"You're not Dean."

Dean recoiled, confused. "Yes, Sammy, I am Dean. Why wouldn't I be Dean?"

Sam shakes his head, then stopped as it pulls at his stitches.

"Dean wasn't at the battle. We were careful. He's only human and it was wrong but I needed him to be _safe_, he wasn't at the battle. Where am I?"

Great. So when Sam had called earlier, he'd been preparing for a _battle_. One that was _too dangerous _for Dean. Then, presumably, everything had gone to hell and Sam's ally (allies?) had been wounded or killed, but he'd managed to kill whatever nasty had been about to come.

John piped up again. "Sam, you appeared in a hotel room. There's been off-the-charts demonic activity around here for almost a year, and then nothing for a month. We were expecting a demon more powerful than anything we've ever seen, and you appeared. What was it that you fought?" He asked, leaning forward into the very edge of Sam's personal space.

Sam shrank back, just a little. Subtly. His eyes hardened as he made a decision.

"…I can't tell you that," he said flatly, tasting the words. "I need to go."

He began to move towards standing, but Dean gently put his hand on his brother's chest. Sam jerked away like he'd been shot, cringing.

"Dude, you're not going anywhere for another week. Someone _stabbed you through_. You're lucky you didn't die." He had to say those words out loud. What Dean wanted was to grab his brother by his shoulders and shake some _sense_ into him, but for now he just needed his brother to stay safe and recover.

Sam made a distressed expression, somehow conveying betrayal and upset through his eyebrows, since his mouth was probably hurting like a bitch. "He wouldn't kill me. You may not like him—won't like him when you meet him—wouldn't like—whatever. He wouldn't kill me. Not if it would save the world."

And now Sammy'd got that stubborn look about him. They'd get no more out of him tonight, and he proved the point by carefully moving himself into a better position for sleeping and pointedly closed his eyes against his family.

Dean manages to convince John with a look and an eyebrow-tilt to let the kid sleep. He needed to heal. They'd gotten some information, enough to know if he changed his story too much, and that was all they needed for now.

John nodded silently and got up to join Dean on the other bed.

Dean shifted to make room. "Alright. We know that Sammy knew about someone, probably someone who hurt him in the past. Do you think this might be the demon that killed mom?"

John looked thoughtful. Keeping the conversation just above a whisper, he replied, "Could be. He mentioned several times that it had hurt someone and he didn't want anyone to die. Especially if he was calling you to say goodbye, just in case he didn't come back. If it _was_ the demon that killed Mary, he probably wanted us to stay out of the whole thing until it was dead, if it was as powerful as it seems to have been."

"So he found out that it was coming here, and that we were here, and ran off half-cocked to kill it? That doesn't sound like Sam," Dean countered.

John nodded, stroking his chin. "Could be that he had a plan. He mentioned an ally, maybe more than one. He might have walked in thinking he knew what he was doing, underestimated his enemy, and gotten his ally killed. Or it could have just been a last resort—a sort of last-ditch effort to kill or weaken it before it got to us. That seems more like your brother," he suggested.

"So he knew he was screwed and fought the thing anyway. His ally got killed and he killed the demon, then whatever was bringing the demon here just grabbed Sam instead? Can that happen?"

John took his journal out of his coat pocket, flipping through it. "For some rituals. If Sam was directly the one to kill it, its power might have rubbed off on him enough that the ritual would activate using him instead. For some demons, they have to be killed the right way or they give you some nasty curses. Especially the older ones."

Dean glanced over at his brother, who was asleep or doing a very good job of pretending. "He was beat up, but I don't see any obvious curses. Hopefully this'll be the only consequence."

"You're right, and we'll see soon. Once he's recovered some, we'll ask him for the details." With that, John got up and started rummaging through his duffel in the corner. "In the meantime, we'll need to rest up. I'll take first watch."

* * *

**Here's to hoping you liked it! Don't worry, the rest of Team Free Will should be showing up soon, depending on how I divide the chapters. After all, it's their story too.**


	2. In Which a Thing or Two is Explained

**I'm going on the theory that humans can only live in their own body here, which is why Stanford!Sam isn't hanging around anywhere. If archangels can only use one body in the long term, humans can only use one body, full stop/period, right? Right.**

* * *

Sam's worst wounds were just deep cuts by the end of the week. He'd always been a fast healer, but that was just ridiculous. He had fading scars all over his body, of course, but he could move around without too much pain and he'd started making sense and stopped talking like a traumatized lunatic. That was good news as far as Dean was concerned.

In fact, he'd healed so well John wanted to get some answers from him that morning. They'd faked a dangerous gas leak in the hotel and stayed there to let Sam rest and heal, but they did have to get answers and get moving soon.

So it came to be that they were all sitting on the beds eating toast when John finally asked, "What really did happen, Sam? You were halfway delirious when you arrived that night."

Clearly, it was the wrong question to ask. Sam stiffened and stopped eating immediately, and Dean's mind automatically went into finding a way to sneakily make Sam eat his breakfast even as he listened to Sam's answer.

"There was a fight. I won. Nothing to worry about. I'm done hunting, and I'm just going to go back to college now. I don't want anything to do with this life, I think I've made that clear by now." Sam said in a complete monotone, putting down his plate and moving to stand. Dean grabbed his arm, gently pulling him back down without wrenching any of his wounds.

"Sam." is all he said, but it was enough.

Sam looked at him, looked deep into his eyes. Dean could feel the knife's edge they were balancing on—Sam had always done what Dean ordered him to, because Dean never ordered him to do anything. Forcing him to stay and have this conversation upset the balance, and Sam was deciding whether his regard for his brother was enough for him to forgive this violation of their silent treaty and stay despite his misgivings.

Finally, Sam eased back into a sitting position on the bed, but Dean noticed how he moved so that he was behind Dean. Like he was asking Dean to shield him from John.

Dean straightened and gave Sam a look—two parts support and one part reproach. Instinctively he wanted to protect his brother from anything that made him unhappy, but he also didn't want Sam to feel that he needed protection from his own father.

"There was a…demon is a bit of a misnomer, but it'll do. He wanted to do something I couldn't accept. I killed him. End of story." Sam said stiffly.

John scowled at Sam's non-answer. "How did you hear about this demon? You said you were done hunting."

Sam glared. "I _was_, right up until this demon had to involve _me_ in his psycho end-the-world plan. I wasn't just going to sit there and do nothing."

Dean knew this pattern. A fight would happen, Sam would throw out some insult or another distraction, and the whole conversation would be diverted from whatever it was that he didn't want to talk about.

"Sam. Tell me what happened, start to finish." Dean interrupted, moving to block John out of Sam's line of sight entirely. It worked in that Sam relaxed, comfortable with Dean demanding to know what was going on with him. Dean had spent years demanding to know where Sam had gotten this scrape or that bruise, and their time apart didn't change Sam's familiarity with the situation.

It didn't work in that Sam was still being stubborn. "I can't do that."

Dean made a frantic signal behind his back to stop John from simply demanding answers. They all knew that if Sam was going to tell someone something he didn't want to, it would be Dean, hands down.

Dean leaned forward a little, slowly getting a little closer to his brother. "Why not? Is someone threatening you?"

This was familiar, too—Dean knew how much his brother appreciated that he was asking first if it wasn't Sam's fault he couldn't tell them anything. Assuming that Sam was keeping silence out of stubbornness was the quickest way to get shut out.

Predictably, Sam relaxed a little bit further—still ready to bolt, but also ready to stay a little longer.

"I can't tell you-" Dean could _hear_ John tensing behind him "-because I'm trying to _keep you safe_. The less involved you are, the better. You need to understand this—this is _my_ problem, _I_ brought it upon _myself_, and _I'm_ going to be the one to deal with it. Enough other people have suffered for this already, Dean! I'm not going to watch you kill yourself trying to keep me safe!"

Sam looked ready to go on for a moment, but he caught himself.

"You've had this conversation before," Dean realized. "With…Cas?"

Sam sat up a little straighter, relaxed a little more. "You know who Cas is?"

Right here. He could lie and it wouldn't be hard to get Sam to spill everything. If this Cas meant as much to Sam as he seemed to—and that feeling in Dean's gut wasn't jealousy, even though it was definitely the job of Sam's actual _brother_ to try to interfere in his life to keep him from endangering himself and this Cas guy had no business butting in when Sam should have just come to Dean—pretending to know him would be a pretty much guaranteed way to get Sam to talk.

It would also be manipulating his brother with the memory of his dead friend into talking about what was evidently a traumatizing fight, if Sam's nightmares were anything to go by. In front of their father who Sam suddenly didn't feel comfortable or safe with. While Sam was still exhausted from his injuries.

It would be good for Sam to talk about it. All that girly shit was something Sam liked to do and it made him feel comfortable.

Sam would never forgive him.

"You mentioned him a couple of times when you were having nightmares."

Dean didn't hear any movement from John behind him, so he figured his father was making himself scarce so Dean could work his magic.

Sam's face fell, but he nodded his acceptance. "Cas thought it was a decent plan, actually, considering the alternative. But I needed to keep everyone as far away as possible, so I didn't end up hurting them. There were…some fights about whose fault the whole thing was, I guess."

Sam's guard was slowly coming down—now that they were Talking, he automatically went into trust-mode. He wouldn't be ready to say much yet, but he might talk about his allies, which would give them a good starting point.

"Who was Cas?" Dean asked.

Wrong question. Sam flinched, curling in on himself just a little. He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.

He cocked his head to the side like he was listening to something no one else could hear. He kept at it for a couple seconds before he leaped to his feet like he'd been electrocuted.

"I should go. I really need to leave, I need to…I need to go."

Before Dean could stop him, he'd backed off of the bed and up against the window. He stood there for a second, hands behind him, and the window popped open. He was gone before any of them could get in another word.

Immediately, John moved to follow him, and Dean left through the door in order to intercept him if John wasn't fast enough. He ran through the hotel and out the lobby door, berating himself for his fumble the whole way.

_Stupid! Of course you don't ask about the dead guy, he doesn't want to think about the dead guy! He's grieving! Ask about the battle, or college, or something nonthreatening, do not ask about the dead friend!_

Knowing his brother's bleeding heart syndrome, Dean figured Sam would be heartbroken if he had a friend and that friend died. It was a little hard to think of his brother having friends, but if he imagined Sam treating someone like he treated Dean but with less honesty and more politeness, he could see it. He could also see how those friends would be able to rip Sam's heart out of his chest and stomp on it.

His nerdy little brother didn't have a suspicious bone in his body when it came to people he liked. He wasn't good at dulling the pain with hunting and alcohol and many, many nights in strangers' bedrooms. Why on Earth had Dean thought it was a good idea to bring up the dead friend?

By the time he'd made a full circle of the hotel with no sign of his brother, he was getting worried. John had lost him as well.

In an hour, he was frantic. Sam had even left his cell phone, his wallet—everything but the clothes on his back and some bandages.

In a day, it became a mission.

In a month, looking for Sammy was a lifestyle.

It would be a year before he heard anything to do with his bother again.

* * *

I don't know what I was thinking, staying with Dean and Dad for so long. Gabriel warned me that demons were all about their leaders and I would be tracked down as Lucifer's killer once he was dead. Not that it matters, since Gabriel's dead. Sort of.

Apparently, Lucifer had some tricks up his sleeve.

The King of Hell automatically gets enormous power, blah, blah, blah. It was what allowed Lucifer to act as a counterpoint to God despite not being a God himself.

Interestingly, he'd gotten what he wanted all along, after a fashion.

It seems that Lucifer figured out how to use that power to break one of the basic rules of being an angel—sure, you can time travel, but you don't get to change anything, since any changes you make you've already lived through.

Being the King of Hell apparently let him just rewrite time whenever it didn't go how he wanted it to. It wouldn't have worked if he hadn't been an Archangel first, but he had been, so he could freely go back and redo whatever didn't go his way.

Well, not if he's dead, he can't.

It had been a pretty good plan, really. Go fight him. Use demon powers galore. Have Cas help distract him. Drag him into my body. Gabriel stabs me with pure destructive Grace, juiced up with the same rough combination of demon and angel that made up Lucifer, demon power courtesy of yours truly. If we got the ratio right, it would hurt me but kill him. It would also drain Gabriel into oblivion if we weren't careful, so Cas gave up what was left of his Grace, too. What was left was me, pumped up with all of Lucifer's power, and a couple of exhausted, heavily wounded angels. They might have been dead, I didn't know for sure, and that was the part I hated most.

I thought I'd be able to kill Lucifer and be done with it all. I didn't expect that the bastard had been rewriting history. But his spell activated when he was about to die, and I had enough of his power still in me for it to think that I was him. I'd been dying, or close enough to it, so it brought me back to my Stanford years.

Fun fact: I got my younger body back, but I got to keep all of my wounds. I'm not sure how that even helps—wouldn't Lucifer have been going back in time just to die every time?

But I'd landed in a hotel room. I remember the sudden knowledge of what had happened to me coming out of nowhere, and remembering the explosion that had been the spell, and then realizing that it had probably killed Cas and Gabriel if they hadn't already died.

I think I said something, but I don't know what or to whom, and then I was waking up in a panic.

I suddenly had all of this _knowledge_—I knew that Lucifer was dead in this time, had dropped dead the moment the spell activated. I knew the name of each subspecies of demon and what its habits were and the _trend of favorite colors for vengeance demons_.

There was just so _much_ of it.

And then Dean and Dad wanted to know what had happened, and I set forward with the vague desire to fix things. No one had to die. Lucifer was dead, so the apocalypse didn't have to come about. If I could keep Dean safely away from Heaven and Hell, he would never have to get hurt by anything more dangerous than a restless spirit.

Of course, then he had to pull out his honest eyes and let-big-brother-take-care-of-it-who-hurt-you routine. For a moment, I almost caved and told him everything.

Then I felt something, and all the new _knowledge_ in my head had told me that I was going to be chased soon, and if I didn't want to be caught, I needed to run.

A quick flick of Lucifer's stolen powers—why do I still have those?—and the window was a perfect escape route. I felt a twinge going over the salt line, but it didn't stop me.

The instant I hit the ground, I willed myself to be somewhere else and _pushed_.

* * *

I wake up in a cornfield.

Immediately, I take inventory. Limbs, still attached. Wounds, almost healed. Soul, still here. Sanity, barely even frazzled. Heart…aching. But I'm not thinking about Cas and Gabriel now.

Or ever. I don't want to think about their bravery or determination or how they died and it's all my fault.

New thought!

There's still all this information I can't possibly have spinning around in my head, and every time I think about something, everything I shouldn't know about it spins around me for a moment before it settles into my mind—like I'm downloading something.

Even as I think about it, the process reveals itself to me.

_I killed the King of Hell. I am his successor. This is the knowledge and power I inherited. And all the demons of Hell are going to be tracking down their ruler to drag me down with them. Hell needs a King._

Yeah, no. I killed Lucifer to avoid having anything to do with Hell ever again, and I don't have a great track record with power. I choose the 'run away' option.

I pick myself up off the ground and look around me. Hmm, hard choice. I have nothing, nothing, and nothing around me as far as the eye can see.

I go in the direction that feels the least demonic. My 'inheritance' tells me that it's roughly north by northeast, and there are about a hundred demonic hotspots in that general direction, if I want to go back to Hell.

Since I'm going with the 'running away' option, I need to get a quick mode of transportation that doesn't knock me out for who knows how long afterwards.

Of course, I immediately know that I've become something not dissimilar from a demonic Archangel, since that's what Lucifer was and that's how Hell is shaped right now. Apparently, Hell is shaped after its King and the King is shaped after Hell. I just 'flew' somewhere, and the process would get easier the more I did it. However, it would also raise flags for everyone looking for me.

I wonder if I have wings now.

I do.

_That was a rhetorical question!_ I protest to…myself. I am a little curious, though, and in response to my curiosity the wings manifest themselves.

Okay, I regret that curiosity now.

My wings are huge, ugly things, tattered and black. All of the feathers are in disarray or missing and I'm even more of a freak than I was before.

The wings twitch and hunch miserably around me and I just wish that I'd never survived that battle. I don't _want_ to have wings or rule Hell or spend the rest of my life running away from _every demon in existence_.

But I can save Dean.

I hold on to that idea, clutch it to my chest like a lifeline, and it feels almost worth it. Anything is worth it for the chance to save Dean.

I begin moving.

It takes me a while to figure out how to get rid of the wings, but that's even weirder. I can feel them hanging behind me, and they hit cornstalks and brush against the ground when I'm not careful. It's just eerie to see clearly that there's nothing on my back and feel just as clearly that there is.

I manifest them again, eventually, since no one's around to see what a freak I am anyway.

It must have been midafternoon when I woke up, and now the sun's just beginning to set. My wings ache from the effort of keeping them up off the ground, tensed above my shoulder blades. I have no idea how Can and Gabriel managed this, but suddenly I feel a lot of sympathy for all the times things mysteriously got knocked over behind them when they turned.

Still not thinking about Gabriel and Castiel.

I wonder what Dean's doing right now, and that's even worse. I hope he's not freaking out. I hope he just forgets this whole thing. I hope he's safe.

I almost start praying, for the familiar comfort of it, but then I realize that the King of Hell probably doesn't get to pray.

Besides, everyone I might pray to is gone.

Not thinking about that!

It's a pretty sunset. I have to crane my neck around to see it, but it looks nice, at least. When my wings aren't blocking the view.

Curious, I stretch one out to its full length. They're huge, bigger than I am. I can't comfortably reach them while I'm walking, although I can kind of brush my hand along the inside of it. I think I might be able to grab them if I sit down and stretch them a bit over my shoulder.

They're in shreds and look barely functional. I don't know if that's a reflection of the new lows I've fallen to or the battle I'm still healing from, but then I know that it's because_ I've been taking shitty care of them, idiot. If I bothered to straighten the feathers out, they could heal with me._

I will never get used to suddenly knowing things. It's pretty annoying, too.

Still, I have to keep going. There are still demons on my tail, and I'm not sure how I've managed to evade them.

Ah. _I've been subconsciously suppressing my newfound powers, so no one can sense me. They're confused, since I should be shining like a beacon._

Well, that's pretty convenient. Since I don't want anything to do with these powers, all I have to do is keep suppressing them and moving around, and no one'll be able to track me down. Well, not easily, anyway.

In theory.

I sort of pet my wing, trying to groom the feathers into order. It doesn't really do anything, and it occurs to me that I know nothing about wings or feathers or what I'm even supposed to do with these things.

First thing's first, find a town big enough to have a library. Or an exotic pet store. Once I've learned how to walk without bumping my wings into things.

My inheritance has nothing to say about that, and I take a moment to scowl at it.

Then I realize what I'm doing and shake my head. I must be going a little crazy, and I need to rest soon. I may have spent most of the day napping, but I'm starving and my wings are tired.

I don't really know what I can do for food—I've been walking for hours and seen nothing but corn and soybeans, and those aren't edible right off the plant. I think. Maybe? But I can probably stop at one of the barbed wire fences and rest, maybe try to figure out wing maintenance on my own.

I wonder idly if I can use them to boost a jump. I'm in a soybean field, so I have some space to test it out, I figure.

It takes a little bit to figure out how to flap them—moving them around is still clumsy, and flapping requires a lot more deliberate effort on my part. Eventually I manage to sort of convulse them, which is good enough to take some weight off of my feet.

I try again, a little faster and harder, and I actually get into the air for half a second. I can feel the air going straight though the gaps where feathers are missing or crooked, and I sort of try to spread them out a little more. It doesn't sort everything out, but the next time I flap I rise a foot and a half in the air and I count it as a win. Also, my wings are working out the cramps from being held in the same position all day.

By the time I get to the edge of the field, I'm lifting into the air every third step, and staying up longer each time. It's an exhausting effort, but something about it makes me feel better. Freer.

I'm not sure how exactly to lie down without doing even more damage, but I eventually kind of slump forward onto my stomach on the grass between the fields. My left wing almost catches on the barbed wire fence, but I snatch it back in time, folding it awkwardly on my back.

I meant to fix my wings, but I'm asleep before I can do a thing.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! And thanks for the sweet reviews so far, too!**


End file.
